A birthday cake. A rope. A man dressed up in a costume that made him look like a floodlight wearing waders. The third line of a lost Shakespeare tragedy. Polish dancing. A horse who takes everything far too personally. A teapot full of custard, and a bloodied baseball bat. You wouldn’t normally connect these seemingly unrelated things, but they all became key parts of the jigsaw in what was the strangest case of my long career.
It was the long, hot summer of 1993. Japan had just won the Eurovision Song Contest, Accrington Stanley had won the World Cup and the Bee Gees had held the number one spot for three consecutive weeks with Paranoid Android. The world was buzzing, but the world of criminal detection was curiously quiet. I sat at my desk with my feet up, watching the smoke from my shoes drifting up towards the ceiling fan. It was that hot, that the friction from my recent Polish dancing class had set fire to my soles. The game was afoot.
The burn on my ankles was so severe that I went to the medicine cabinet to get some kind of healing lotion. Something wasn’t right though. I could just see, out of the corner of my eye, a suicide note. It was from Jeanie. She sent me one every year as a form of endearment, but this time, somehow, something was different. Attached to the note was a teapot full of custard. Clearly, there had been a murder.
I took the teapot to the lab for analysis. The man at the photo counter at Boots looked puzzled for a moment, but told me he’d do what he could. Twenty-four hours later, the prints were ready. They showed a birthday party, with an unfamiliar woman blowing out the candles on a birthday cake. I dusted the prints, and they were a match for Jeanie’s.
I took the photographs to the pathologist, who was typically unimpressed.
“She’s not dead,” was all he would say, even though when you put it all together with the teapot full of custard, it clearly suggested otherwise.
“Thus of ye custodian mirth,” the doctor interrupted, “thou shalt salver thy turnips benign.”
“Is that Shakespeare?” I asked. “I’m not familiar with that line.” The pathologist looked me dead in the eye and made a sign with his fingers, a sort of inverted trapezoid with tentacles. The sign of the Secret Society of the Lost Play! Whatever I was getting into, I was getting into it deep. But there was no going back now, if I was going to find out the truth about Jeanie, I would need to become an initiate!
It took me a good three years to get over the turnip initiation. At night time, I would cry myself to sleep, often having to turn to recreational use in order to weary myself enough to drop off. As I sat on the swing, a charming little pony poked its head over the fence, which was surprising, as the fence was around eight feet tall.
“Well, now, aren’t you the cutest little horse?” I said by way of a compliment, but the pony just grew angrier and angrier and leapt over the fence. “Now, now,” I said. “Let’s not be hasty,” but it was too late — the pony climbed the top of the steps and went down the slide in a terrifyingly aggressive manner. Then, rather sinisterly, and watching me intently all the time, it did it again. As you can imagine, my heart raced, but of course, now it all made sense. This was all part of the initiation — the final test! The pathologist reappeared, now dressed in the ceremonial robes of a true believer — a costume consisting of a gigantic headlamp and waders - and riding on the pony.
“Congratulations,” he said. “You are now a member of the Secret Society of the Lost Play. Miss Jeanie will see you now.” He led me away over hill and vale, until we arrived at last at a vast canyon spanned by a tightrope. “Walk across the tightrope,” he said, “and all you seek will be found on the other side.”
He was right! There it was! The murder weapon - a bloodied baseball bat. And what’s more, it had been tied up with rope! There was no need to continue anymore. Another case solved!
FIN
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